If you have always wondered why walnut is prized as the perfect gun stock material, read on.
As exquisite as walnut is to look at, its beauty is more than skin deep. It possesses a number of qualities that make it the ideal gun stock material.
Walnut is a dense, hard and resilient wood. It is naturally warping-, shrinkage- and splitting-proof. These are ideal qualities when looking for a gun stock wood. In addition, walnut is strong, easy to work with and takes fine checkering well.
Walnut wood is first cut into roughly chunks of timber, also known as blanks. Examining a blank to envisage how the finished stock is going to look like takes a highly skilled and experienced craftsman.
They would look for blanks that can yield walnut stocks that are straight-grained at the head and getting gradually decorative towards the butt. Most of the stock requires the wood to be thick and strong whereas at the head of the stock, where it wood meets the metal, it can be very thin. So here, and on the grip, the grain should be as straight as possible for strength. However, finding such blanks is not easy and they may come with big price tags.
Top-grade walnut is expensive because it is scarce. This is mostly because even the best tree cannot yield a large number of quality blanks. The older the tree is, the better. But most ancient trees have already been harvested.
Freshly felled wood needs to be seasoned, or dried to remove the moisture to prevent shrinking, twisting or cracking. Premium walnut can’t be dried in a kiln. It is air-dried which makes the wood more flexible, and also lends it a deeper color. This process can take at least 6-8 months. Overall, it can take more than a year to go from tree to blank.
Skilled craftsmen have their own way of ascertaining which pieces of walnut are excellent grade. The color can vary from pale to rich dark hues.
One of the biggest advantages with walnut is that you simply have to wipe the stock of the gun down with a clean, soft cloth after every use, making it the lowest maintenance wood. little care is needed. If the stock needs rehydrating, then linseed oil and Tung oils are the popular choices. Tung oil creates a more durable finish and is more water-resistant than linseed oil. However, tung oil is also more expensive than linseed oil. Wipe only a small amount on and leave it to soak in. Then remove any excess oil with a cloth.
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